The vindictive star who called John Wayne an “undignified amateur”
In many ways, John Wayne is still the perfect example of a ‘movie star’.
He wasn’t much of an ‘actor’ – his two personas could be best summarised as ‘looking grumpy with a hat on’ and ‘looking grumpy without a hat on’ – but good lord did he have that ‘X factor’. Idolised by an entire generation of young men for his no-nonsense attitude and hyper-masculine aura, Wayne lit up every screen he was on and remained a major star for decades.
Given his rugged good looks and buckets of presence, it’s hardly surprising that he was just as big a hit with the ladies off-screen as he was in the movies. ‘The Duke’ was married three times, twice to fellow actors. However, it’s not the marriages we’re interested in. It’s the many, many confirmed and reported affairs that Wayne had over his life. His involvement with Merle Oberon lasted the better part of a decade, and his reported fling with co-star Gail Russell led to his second wife attempting to shoot him in a drunken rage. But obviously, out of all the goddamn connections (true or completely made up) that tabloids reported on, his most famous lover was the legendary German-American star Marlene Dietrich.
Wayne and Dietrich appeared in numerous films together in the early 1940s, and romance soon blossomed. The pair would see each other “in secret” (everybody knew) for three years, with Wayne allegedly dodging serving in World War II to continue seeing her, although that claim is heavily disputed. Given the length of their affair and the open nature of it, you’d have thought the two would have had a mutual respect for one another after it ended. This was far from the truth.
According to the book John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth by Michael Munn, Dietrich reportedly dismissed Wayne in her memoirs. She referred to him as an “ungifted amateur” before adding that he once came to her on his knees asking for money. “Unknown, penniless, he begged me to help him,” she wrote. “I can’t really say he was my ‘partner’, since his performance was kept within very strict bounds – he spoke his lines and that was all. I helped as best I could.”
This illicit relationship was rocky to say the least. According to Henry Hathaway, a director who frequently worked with Wayne, his star once crashed his car because he was so preoccupied with his mistress. They were discovered by the FBI of all people, who were observing Dietrich to uncover any potential links to the Nazi party. While this revelation would result in the breakdown of Wayne’s marriage, Dietrich remained married to assistant director Rudolf Sieber until his death.
The original Rooster Cogburn wasn’t the only big name to be involved with the starlet. Dietrich had a long list of suitors, ranging from actors Kirk Douglas and Errol Flynn to the author George Bernard Shaw to both President John F Kennedy and his father Joseph. She was also bisexual in an era where homosexuality of any kind was kept very much on the down-low, so the full list of her prominent lovers may never be known.
Slagging off John Wayne is one thing, but to do so after a highly-publicised affair is something else entirely. Who knows what drove Dietrich to write such harsh words about her former co-star – the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood was a truly mad time.
